What does art teach us about the human experience? A conversation with Russ Ramsey - Podcast Ep. 230

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Welcome to the Got Questions podcast. So occasionally I like to have a guest on to discuss a particular topic.

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Often that's an author and that's the case today. Joining me today is Russ Ramsey. He's the author of the new book,

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Van Gogh Has a Broken Heart. And what most intrigued me about this possibility is that it's very different than the other interviews we've had in terms of the topic.

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I mean, his book is a lot about art and its meaning and what Christians can learn from it. And even some of the apologetics, what we can learn about God through art.

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Definitely a very different topic than what we've covered in the past. But at Got Questions, we do receive quite a few questions related to art.

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And so I'll be asking Russ both about his book and also some of these questions.

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So stay tuned to the end for some of those questions. But Russ, thank you for joining me today. Yeah, it's good to be here.

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So let me ask you first, Russ, tell our audience just a little bit about yourself and what led you to write

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Van Gogh Has a Broken Heart. Well, I am a pastor in the

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Nashville area, married with five kids. And I have been a lifelong layman student of the arts.

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So I was never an art major in college or anything like that. But I've been paying attention to art for as long as I've been in middle school.

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I think I had an art teacher who told us that if we want a lifelong appreciation with the arts, we should find an artist that we connect with and just pay attention to them for the rest of our days.

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And they'll introduce us around to their friends and inspiration. And we'll learn more about them. And that's been the case for me with Van Gogh and then some others.

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And so I've been just, I come from a farming community in Indiana.

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I come from a storytelling people. I come from people who kind of learn a lot by way of story, which is kind of how people are, right?

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That it was Jesus' primary method of teaching was storytelling and parables. And as a pastor,

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I'm a storyteller in a lot of the work that I do, from the pulpit and in writing and otherwise.

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And so for me, kind of the merging of the being a storyteller and thinking about the origin of some of the world's great art and then the people who made it and the stories of the people who made it has always been something intriguing to me.

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And as I began to kind of get into trying to understand, like, why was this painting made?

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What's the story behind this sculpture? I just found that most of the time it was a very fascinating tale to unpack.

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And so I have been doing that for a while, and these books are kind of the fruit of that.

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My hope is to present the subject matter of art in a storyteller's voice in a way that kind of eliminates those feelings, or at least helps eliminate those feelings of insecurity that I think a lot of people feel when it comes to engaging with art.

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That somehow if I don't have a background in art criticism or art history, I'm just not going to get it.

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And I think art at its core, especially great art, is just really good storytelling. And so that's what the book is.

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It's just storytelling, with art as kind of the subject to talk around a whole lot of other things related to the human experience, the things that everybody goes through, particularly in this book related to suffering.

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For sure. I mean, I'm not an art aficionado myself.

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I can definitely recognize a beautiful art. I think I probably would say

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I prefer photography over, like, paintings, but I've seen some amazingly beautiful paintings before.

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Some artists I appreciate more than others. I prefer something maybe a little more realist than some of the, like a

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Van Gogh, who a lot of their paintings, it's like, hmm, what is this person thinking? Or what is he trying to communicate through something like that?

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But a quote in your book that I found particularly interesting, you say, much of the world's great art comes from places of sadness.

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And I believe that's often why we connect with it. The artists bring their personal experience to the work to say something meaningful about the world to the viewer.

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So how is that the case, and what are maybe some really poignant examples of that that you've seen in art?

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Well, I think one of the poignant examples for me is Van Gogh's entire body of work.

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Like, when I think of Van Gogh, I don't think of a particular painting. I don't think of Starry Night or The Sunflowers.

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I really think of him and then the work that he gave, in much the same way that a person might feel about, you know, a songwriter like Bruce Springsteen or Paul Simon, where, you know, it's a body of work as opposed to just a song.

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And Van Gogh, one of the things that is a through line for him is that he lived a life that was filled with this quest for beauty, being in the presence of beauty, capturing beauty, communicating beauty to others, mixed with a life that was filled with a lot of sadness and torment.

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And so there's a sadness that runs throughout his work. And even the title for the book comes from a letter that he wrote to his brother about a painting of a bridge in France.

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It's just an iron bridge going over a river, and he's describing it to his brother. He's describing the color of the water and the sunset in the background and the silhouettes of the people on the railings.

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And then at the end of that description, he says, I'm trying to get at something utterly heartbroken and therefore utterly heartbreaking.

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And there's an element of sadness just in the way that he arranges his compositions and colors.

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Whether you've studied composition and color, it's an experience that many people have when they spend time with his work.

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I just taught a second grade class about Van Gogh, and we looked at some of his paintings.

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And I asked them after I'd shown a few paintings of, you know, just landscape type of things, the sunflowers and a river at night, feeling like, what are some of the feelings you feel like inside of you when you look at his work?

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And a couple of the kids were quick to say, I feel a little sad. And I think that a lot of the art that is kind of gathered up and retained in museums is part of the reason that it's so important for so many people, is it's either asking a question that is fundamental to the human experience, or it is making a statement about what is fundamental to the human experience.

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And a lot of it has to do with tragedy, navigating hardship, the complicated relationship between beauty and grief.

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And so many of the paintings that we know and celebrate and flock to museums to see are in some way connected to that human ache to be known and to understand our purpose and to be secure and at peace in the world and loved.

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And so Van Gogh's one who does that for me. The way that Rembrandt composes his Return of the

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Prodigal Son is another one of those paintings where it is just a story that unfolds in front of you in a single frame, where you see broken relationships being healed, and relationships of close proximity, distance coming into those between the father and the elder brother.

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And our art just has this way of kind of getting past the gates of our defenses and into the realm of those places where we think and we feel.

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And it converses with us in that way. And so I think that's a lot of the art that I'm particularly drawn to is of that nature, for sure.

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I think there's something about art that I'm not great at explaining it.

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I'm not great at quantifying it. If you take me to an art museum and ask me, what does this painting say to you?

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I probably would not come up with anything close to what the artist intended. But in some senses, that's kind of the beauty of art.

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But what intrigues me most about art, well -done art, is that to me, it communicates something about how

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God designed us in his image, and therefore communicates something about God. So how does art do that?

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And what do you think art is ultimately communicating about who God is, what he is like, and then what he instills in us as his image bears?

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Well, as human beings being the part of creation that's made in his image, one of the things that's kind of inherent in even that is that God is a maker, that he is a creator.

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And part of our bearing his image is that we then too are creators and we're makers.

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We're sub -creators, I think was the term Tolkien used, that we go and we create things out of nothing or out of the...

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We never create anything, ultimately out of nothing, but we make something that wasn't there before out of the things that we find, and out of our minds, and out of the resources.

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And that is a way that we imitate being made in the image of God, is we're reflecting God as the creator in the way that we express.

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And then we do so, so much of the creation like of great art, is creation with the intention of declaring truth.

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And so when the Lord filled the world in the way that he did, when he created the sun, moon, and stars, when he separated night from day, when he made all the animals and the vegetation, and he separated land from water, that part of the nature of all of those things happening is that we now give up our vacation days to go and behold those things.

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You know, we will travel halfway around the world or across the country to go stand at the edge of the

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Grand Canyon, or to venture into some jungle, or to, you know, stand on the cliffs of Northern Ireland and to look out across the sea, and to behold the splendor of something that conveys to us and communicates to us that there must be a maker, and the maker must be filled with splendor.

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And so when we then create... And by the way, those are things that God did not have to make them that way.

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He didn't have to make a sunset colorful. He didn't have to make the spectrum of colors that we see.

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He chose to. He chose to make our, you know, he chose to make even our bodies be the kinds of intricate organisms that shed tears when we feel overwhelming sorrow.

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He didn't have to make us that way. Sorrow could have just been for us data in our mind, and yet he made us to be people who physiologically react and respond and feel in ways that are more than just binary, but they're holistic with all of our senses.

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And so when we then create art and we try to engage in the same kinds of things, where we try to say something true, we try to say something beautiful, we try to say something good, when we get into that business of trying to express that and communicate to another person something that we believe is ultimately of importance and great meaning for them, we are imitating the way that God interacts with us, and thereby also learning better how

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God interacts with us. Just the other day I was looking at a large, like, blank wall, and it's like...

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It really struck me is how weird that looked. It's like, there shouldn't be just a large, blank wall.

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That wall needs something, whether it's a different color or it's an accent, whether it's some art on the wall, it needs something.

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It's like something in me was like, that's not how it's supposed to be. Then you look at nature, how

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God created things, and there's color, there's variance, there's differences. It's like, the creative aspect of me, while I'm not an artistic creator,

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I do recognize the beauty that God has instilled in His creation, and when I see something man -made that holds no beauty to it, that's just functional, so to speak,

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I'm like, that's...something in me says that's not how it's supposed to be. There should be something else in that, and to me that's just, again, a powerful reminder of God's creativity.

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Not everything needs to be the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Have you ever been to some monasteries where it's wall -to -wall, everything has art on it, portraying scenes from the

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Bible and so forth? That's amazing. In the wrong place, that can be overwhelming.

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You can come across a little like, okay, that's too much, but done tastefully, it can have a powerful impact for sure.

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One of the things you talk about in your book that I definitely appreciated was how, I mean, you mentioned it already briefly, how art is a powerful way of expressing emotion.

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An artist can express emotion in what he paints and how he or she paints it, but then also people who view that are supposed to understand what is being expressed.

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So for you, how does art, how is it particularly good at expressing emotion, and even causing emotion?

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I think of Michelangelo's David as another great example of this, where when an artist sits down to render a scene, particularly a

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Biblical scene, he's having to work with a text that is already written, and the story is already there. And so if you want to make a story that is, and call it, you know,

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David and Goliath, but you make Goliath small and you make David big, it doesn't work because everybody knows, well, that's not the story.

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You have to actually stick to the story that is given to you. But then you choose as an artist, okay, so what part of the story do

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I want to tell if I'm only telling it in one still frame or one statue? And most sculptors up to the time when

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Michelangelo, and even after when he made his sculpture of David, when they would portray

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David, they would portray him after his victory. They would portray him, you know, with,

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Donatello has a bronze sculpture of a young David with the head of Goliath at his feet.

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And, but Michelangelo chose a very different way to go about it, and that is he chose to depict

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David before the battle, but like right as it was about to happen. And so he captures David in this moment of the highest moment of tension in the whole thing, where he is standing, and by the look on his face you can tell he's looking at the giant.

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Goliath is seconds away from dying, and that's the moment that he captures.

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And so it's got this energy and this drama that kind of draws you in where you see, and then he renders him nude, which is another way of kind of just exposing the vulnerability, the utter vulnerability of David to prevail in these, in this battle that he's going into.

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And then in this beautiful kind of irony, Michelangelo makes his statue of David 13 feet tall, four feet taller than Goliath was, you know, in the scripture.

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And so David actually is a giant to stand in front of. But all of those things kind of factor into when you stand in front of it.

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It's why looking at images online, particularly of statues, is not the same as standing in front of it in person, because you're seeing not just the story being told and the way it's being told and the moment that's being captured, but then you're also like wondering about the man with the hammer and the chisel giving the time and attention and focus to creating this thing and what is going through his mind as he is trying to tell us the story in this particular way.

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And it ends up being, you know, it's not just a curiosity or a fascination.

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There is an emotional, spiritual component to it that's evidenced by the fact that if you want to go see

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Michelangelo's David, you have to order your tickets online if you want to get in and you have to order them weeks in advance because people all over the world have recognized that this is a statue that they want to be in the presence of.

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And that speaks to so much more than just technical achievement. It speaks to a transcendental quality of the story being told through the existence of the sculpture and the way that it tells the story.

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It's amazing. All right. I've been to Florence and I've seen the statue up close and along with the many other statues that are in Florence and it's truly amazing, both the talent and the skill.

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I'm very familiar with the story of David and Goliath and just hearing you just talk, I was like, I don't think I've ever thought about, okay, what event specifically is this?

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Is this before the victory? Is it after? I mean, where in the storyline is this?

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But now that you mentioned that, I'm like, yeah, assuming you're correct, but also from what

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I remember seeing of it, that looks right to me. Yeah, he still has the stones and the sling in his hand.

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Yeah. So that actually leads me perfectly into the number one question we get about art.

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So you ready? You probably already guessed where I'm going. The number one question we receive is, how should a

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Christian view nudity in art? Obviously, I've heard people describe the question as like, at what point does nudity in art become pornography?

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And there's a saying, well, you know when you see it, but that's somewhat subjective. So how would you answer that question?

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What about nudity in art? I would say, I think the question that you have to ask is, what is the story that is being told?

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Is the story that is being told a story of unwarranted sexual gratification or voyeurism?

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Or is the story being told of people?

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You know, because the human body is how

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God initially made us. It was with no covering. There's an element of nudity, particularly in like,

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I think Renaissance art in particular, where you have a lot of, the Sistine Chapel ceiling is a great example of that, where there's a lot of exposed genitalia and exposed breasts and skin that is there to kind of present humanity as one thing, rather than it separates the wealthy from the poor.

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It separates the, it clearly identifies the men and the women.

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It's something that is how God looks upon us. And so there's kind of a sanctity in the depiction of the human form.

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And I think it's important for us to also kind of keep in mind that we all live in a cultural moment where we think about the human form and an uncovered human form in particular ways because of the rampant existence of things like pornography.

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But for much of history, when it comes to regarding Renaissance art, it was not scandalous at all to paint a nude figure.

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People would hang them in their homes. People would hang them, they're prominent in museums still. And so I think there's a part of just, is what the artist is telling praiseworthy, good, the things that we're supposed to think on?

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Or is it something that is intended to lead us into sin? Is it intending to lead us into sin?

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And is it for the purpose of besmirching the glory of the image bearers of God?

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Or is it being used as a way of kind of holding forth the beauty of being an image bearer of God?

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And I think that's something that as viewers of art, it really is a challenge for us to deal honestly with our own hearts as we regard it.

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Is to say, is there something in me that would discredit all forms of nudity in art?

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And what is it inside of me that would do that? And is that thing inside of me that would say it's,

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I'm going to discredit all forms of art that contain nudity. Is that honoring to God? Because he sees us with incredible transparency.

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And to truly love and know another person, we see them with greater and greater transparency too.

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Even though it's metaphorical, we see each other more deeply and more intimately, the deeper our friendships go even.

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And so I would say, I think that that is a, I think that it would be a problem we're bringing on ourselves if we're saying, this needs to be a question about all nudity in art.

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But I think the question we have to ask is, is this piece of art telling us something true or is it lying to us? Is it honoring the human form or is it defiling the human form?

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And even if it is defiling the human form, is it defiling the human form in a way that the story it is trying to tell or the statement it's trying to make is important?

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Like Dante's Inferno, Rodin's sculpture, the

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Gates of Hell, which has the thinker, which is the guy sitting with his hand on his chin. He's nude.

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That is Dante. That's who that thinker is. He's Dante and he's sitting over this giant sculpture.

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When you see it in its context, it's over a giant sculpture of doors called the Gates of Hell, in which unclothed bodies and souls are being dragged into eternal punishment.

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And that's certainly a defiling of the human form, but it's also a warning against disobedience to the

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Lord. Excellent answer. I mean, it's one of those things where if your mind is already prone to think dirty, you can see something and make it dirty even when it's not.

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So beauty is the eye of the beholder. And to an extent, the answer to that question is obviously someone who's struggling with overcoming a porn addiction,

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I would strongly advise them to even stay away from nudity in art. That doesn't mean the nudity in art is actually wrong in and of itself, but it's just another reality of the world we live in that we're all messed up.

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We all have our issues and need to be careful with that sort of thing. I'm pretty sure

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I entirely agree with you on nudity in art as much as I know people who take it way too far.

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They say any nudity in art is automatically sinful. And I'm like, I agree that there's risks to it.

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Could I ever paint or draw something like that? I seriously doubt that I could, but I would not automatically say every artistic rendering of nudity would necessarily be wrong, depending on the context, depending on the purpose, depending on what's being portrayed and for what reason.

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But maybe let me close with one question that's related to this. Sure. When I see an artist like Van Gogh or some others, how much of art

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I think portrays the human condition in the sense that, obviously

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Van Gogh apparently did not know the Lord based on what I know of him. And his art portrays almost like a, you can correct me on this, but like a warped view of how the world looks.

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I mean, everything that he's seeing is not, doesn't accurately represent the order and the design that God has instilled in the universe.

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So in what sense does some art that you see display a acknowledgement of the human condition that there is something wrong with the world and only through Christ can that answer be found and the salvation we can experience in him?

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Yeah, I think, one, I think I would disagree with you on Van Gogh. I think he had a very complicated relationship with the church, but he has left behind thousands of letters in which he talks extensively about the

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Lordship of Christ. His life was a paradox. He was a person who drank too much, visited brothels, did things that we would say these are not

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Christian activities at all. I imagine that the kingdom of heaven will be populated with people who have done far worse than Van Gogh did in his conduct because of the reach and the extent of the grace of Jesus Christ to atone for sin.

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But I think, you know, I think that for me, what I'm looking for when it comes to art that makes known the glory of Christ is not as a

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Christian art or secular art, but as an honest art or lying art. You know, is it telling the truth about something or is it deceiving us?

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And I think of a painter named Edward Hopper who hated God. He was a person who was very anti -religion in any way and fiercely committed to kind of this individualism and very proud man.

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And he painted these paintings of New York City. Nighthawks is his most famous one.

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So that's a cafe at night that has four people sitting around a counter. But his paintings are just filled with loneliness.

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And they're filled with the kind of loneliness that if you spend a lot of time with his work, you just start to hurt inside over the sadness of just people who have nobody else in their life.

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And that ache, which was something that he was trying to make a comment about, that ache is actually a biblically true ache, right?

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Is that in this world, unless we understand that our lives have meaning because we're made in the image of God and there is a creator who loves us and made us for himself, if you take all of that away and all that you're left with is a godless world where all we can do is achieve and succeed, it is going to be a very lonely existence.

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And that's how he lived. And that's the truth that he painted in his canvas. I don't agree with him, but it's the fact that he was painting the consequence of rejecting

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God with such clarity that makes it true. Does that make sense? And so I think for, you know, there are a lot of great artists out there who we look at and say, well, these are the people that I would gravitate toward because they painted great biblical scenes.

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But then when you start to investigate their lives, like Rembrandt is a perfect example of this, where Rembrandt has some of the most profound biblical, visual biblical exegesis that you'll get out there.

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And he also had multiple wives and he mistreated women and he abused money and he, you know, he was a person who, and he died in obscurity and kind of alone.

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And, you know, and yet when

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Psalm 139, when the Lord knit these people together in their mother's wombs and brought them into this world and said, there's not a single day that will come for you that I don't know about and haven't ordained, that part of the work of these individuals would be to create these art that would hang in our museums, that then we would go visit and look at and say, what does this tell me about living in this world such as it is?

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And what does this tell me about the stories of scripture? And so I think that when the art that I find most

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God honoring and most instructive to my soul is art that I look at. And I think this person was trying really hard to say something as true as they possibly could about the world.

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And if they're lying, if they're just telling me something that's like it's categorically, theologically just false, then

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I don't have much use for it. But if they're trying to depict the sadness and the brokenness of the world because their lives are completely shattered by sadness and brokenness and sin, then there's use in those paintings for instructing our hearts and things that are noble and good and true.

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And so that's what I'm looking for is I'm looking for what art is telling me the truth. About what it means to be alive in this world and what it means to have a

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God who is glorious and redeeming. That's absolutely right.

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I look at art and even when I'm not 100 percent sure what it's portraying. I love it when art accurately represents what's what's true, what the condition is of the human heart.

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And what I would say as a dedicated Christian, art that portrays biblical scenes well or biblical truths well is definitely going to be my favorite.

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But even some of the arts that you spoke of that I recognize the beauty in that when it speaks the truth and points people to there's something wrong with this world.

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And whether that's just a recognition of loneliness or something beyond that, to the point of actually recognize your need for a savior.

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I 100 percent recognize that art can reach different people and reach people in different ways than other mediums can.

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And for that, I'm very grateful and appreciate the tremendous work that's been done. So, Russ, the title of your book,

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Van Gogh as a Broken Heart. It's a topic that a lot of Christians are all that familiar with.

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And I think it's something a lot of Christians should know a lot more about. Briefly, the point of this episode of the podcast is not just to get people to buy your book, but who's the book for and who do you think would find your book particularly interesting?

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If you are navigating a particularly difficult or sad season, if you are grieving, if you are experiencing profound loss and trying to see beauty, trying to remember how to see beauty in the world, this book is written for you.

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If you're somebody who feels like there's just been a catastrophe that's happened in your life and you wonder if there's hope.

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These are sad stories that are about beautiful, beautiful things. And so that's the idea for me, is this is for people who are, particularly people who are walking through seasons of sorrow, to find hope in the

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Lord by way of stories about art and scripture. Fantastic. So, yeah, we'll include links to where you can purchase

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Van Gogh as a Broken Heart in the show notes. Our podcast channel at podcast .gotquestions

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.org. Also on YouTube when this video goes live. So Russ, thank you. I truly enjoyed this conversation.

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This book is excellent. And like I said, it's a topic that a lot of Christians are not all that familiar with.

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And I think Christians as a whole could learn more from art and learn to appreciate art more than we typically do.

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So keep doing what you're doing and may God use this book for his glory and use it to encourage people who are struggling with a broken heart, as you said.

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Thank you so much. Thank you so much. This has been the Got Questions podcast with Russ Ramsey, the author of Van Gogh Has a

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Broken Heart. Got questions? The Bible has answers. We'll help you find them.